Introduction
The following information was taken from meeting notes (meetings on 6/4/2015 and 5/20/2015)
Goals for the project:
- Examine trends (or lack thereof) in startup funding over time
- Examine return on investment for startup funding
- Publications
- Proposals submitted
- Grants received
- Tenure
Data:
- Spreadsheets from the Office of the Vice President for Research
- Name, Department, College, Salary, Start Date
- Startup package allocation (by category)
- Source of startup funding
- Database from Office of Sponsored Programs Administration (2 databases, 2005-2010 and 2010-2015. Early database will be messier)
- Grants received (by month, as well as total award $$)
- Proposals submitted
- Additional information
- Publications (from scraping Google Scholar)
- Where individuals came from (public/private institution, small/large)
Other factors:
- 2003-2008 was a competitive hiring season (may have larger startup packages as a result)
- 2008 Crash and budget freeze at the state level
- American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009) with increased funding levels
- 2012 slowdown in research funding (may need to compare to NSF/NIH/USDA/DOD/DOE/Ames Lab funding levels)
Analysis of Individual Datasets
Office of the Vice President for Research Data
Total Startup Package Cost
Computing Expenses
In Ag & Life Science, I suspect the computer allocation has decreased due to Moore's law (it's cheaper to get computers that can process genetic data now than it was in 2005). Engineering allocations seem to be somewhat department-related (clustering of green and blue values, in particular). The business school seems remarkably standardized - the amount decreased in 2011-2013, but otherwise has been at approximately the same level (with extremely low variance).
Lab Space/Equipment Expenses
Lab space and lab equipment are obviously only relevant for some colleges. The proportion and raw amount of funding for lab space and equipment in LAS has decreased, while the amount of funding in engineering and human sciences has increased (though the proportion of the funding package has stayed reasonably consistent).
Graduate Assistant Expenses
The recession seems to have hit graduate student support fairly hard (relative to other expenses). Looking at the gross amount of funding allocated for graduate students, we see that startup packages in engineering and human sciences include more support for graduate students than in the past (this is particularly dramatic in human sciences, though the amount of funding is still overall lower than in engineering). In the other colleges, the amount of support for graduate students has stayed relatively consistent over the past 10 years.
Summer Support
Summer funding seems to be fairly common in some areas (business, some of LAS) and almost unheard of in others (design, vet med).
Research Support
Moving Expenses
Moving expenses amounts seem to be reasonably consistent across colleges. The business college seems to once again have a standard package that may change year to year with occasional negotiation. The same may be true of the vet med college.
Office of Sponsored Programs Administration Data
Datasets from OSPA contain information on proposals and awards from 2005-2010 and 2010-2015 (4 total databases).
The following sections are intended to explore some of the limitations of the Proposal and Award datasets. They are not essential for understanding the subsequent analysis. ### Proposals
Some categories of proposals occur in FY06-FY10 but not in FY11-FY16.
Similarly, we don't have information on the funding type for FY11-FY16. It may be useful to exclude Master Agreements, etc. from the data if no similar category exists in FY11-FY16.
There is clearly some periodicity in the funding cycle (end dates, in particular) likely caused by differences between the academic year, government fiscal year, and calendar year.
Examining this from a slightly different perspective, we consider the difference between proposal submission dates and the start and end dates in those proposals.
17% of proposals appear to start before they are submitted, and 0.28% also end before they are submitted.
Looking at the funding duration directly, we see that proposals tend to provide funding over 1-5 years, though very few do extend 10 or more years into the future. A few proposals extend 100 years into the future; this situation occurs when an amount of money is donated for some purpose and can be used at any point.
Awards
Some award activity categories were created for FY11-16: Student Services, Institutional Support, and Academic Support. Other categories have been combined, for instance, the "Dept/Admin Support" category in FY06-FY10 has been combined into the Public Service category, but the overall funding level has declined significantly.
The length of funding also differs between the two datasets as a result of the difference in start date calculations.
Award status differs between the two files as well; this is to be expected (more Active awards should be in the FY11-FY16 data, for instance). "Final" and "Executed" awards are present in FY11-FY16; I am currently tracking down what those statuses imply.
Google Scholar Data
Results from Google Scholar were aggregated between July 6 and July 12, 2015. Google search results (and corresponding BibTeX citations) were collected for results as follows:
| Query | Criteria/Example |
|---|---|
| Author Name | "Smith, John" |
| Date | Year>=2005 |
| Text Contains | "Iowa State University" |
Results were also filtered to ensure that the results were in areas that John Smith at Iowa State would publish in (where possible, ambiguities were resolved by referring to an online CV).
Above, the x-axis shows time at Iowa State (or rather, time since hired), and the y-axis shows the yearly publications (books, articles, etc.). The blue lines indicate departmental averages over time (loess smooth), where there is sufficient data to compute such averages. From this broad overview, we see that publications in many departments peak at approximately 5 years, and then tail off slightly by year 10.
Further analysis is provided in the Merged Data section.
Analysis of Merged Data
Awarded Grant Funding
We'll begin by looking at the timeline - how many years at ISU are necessary before grant applications are successful? We split this by college and faculty rank (as we'd expect that full professors who are hired should be able to command grant money sooner than new faculty). Subsequent graphs show data from hired professors (i.e. not adjuncts, affiliates, lecturers, or clinicians).
The most noticeable difference between colleges is that in engineering, assistant professors get grants about five years after they are hired, and it is very rare for professors at that stage in their careers not to get grant funding. This trend is present (though less pronounced) in Ag & Life Sciences and Human Sciences as well, though some assistant professors in those colleges seem to get funding much earlier in their careers (perhaps because of large grants given to groups of professors). In Liberal Arts and Sciences, grant funding does seem to increase with experience for some hires, but perhaps because LAS includes both arts (which are less grant-reliant) and sciences, this trend is less pronounced than in other colleges.
In order to examine the effect of startup funding on grant receipts over a career of variable duration, we will examine the distribution of startup funding by college, categorizing startup costs by the quartile (calculated for the hire's college). Below, vertical lines mark these quantiles
Using these quantile calculations, we then can examine total grants received as explained by years since hired.
It is important to note several caveats at this point: first, hires are not separated out by faculty rank or position, so hires whose primary responsibilities include administrative work may command large startup packages but bring in relatively little grant funding. Additionally, different colleges have different funding structures: LAS, for instance, may need to provide lab startup funding for science based departments, but would not have to provide this funding for new hires in English or History. Finally, the x-axis shows years since hire, which does not necessarily translate to years at ISU (faculty hired in 2005 may have left in 2011 after receiving tenure, for example).
Linear regression lines are provided here as (extremely) rough approximations; it may be useful to examine the right-most endpoint (rather than the entire line) as a prediction of total grant money received after 10 years at ISU.
With these caveats in mind,
- Startup funding in LAS is correlated with later grant funding; this is likely explained by departmental startup funding (and grant funding) norms.
- Startup funding in engineering is largely not predictive of grant receipts; after 10 years, hires with small startup packages receive approximately the same grant funding as hires with large startup packages.
- Startup funding in Human Sciences is correlated with later grant funding- this may again be a departmental norm situation (food scientists may require lab space and compete for NSF/NIH grants, where professors in the hospitality management department require fewer financial resources when hired and receive fewer grants.)
- Grants are relatively rare in the business college.
Individual Colleges: Grant Proposals and Startup Funding by Department
Examining the LAS results in more detail, we see that departmental startup packages largely fall in the same quantiles. In Chemistry, Physics, BBMB, EEOB, Computer Science, Statistics, Economics, and Math, the career trajectory of grant proposals suggests that the large startup packages are worthwhile investments; these disciplines are also largely in the top two quartiles for startup funding. Psychology is more of a mixed bag; many psychologists received large startup packages but have not received significant grant funding. Disciplines with more economical startup packages are also less likely to have faculty receiving large grants; this is likely due to discipline norms, rather than faculty quality.
Proposed Grant Funding
The most noticeable difference between colleges is that in Engineering and AGLS, assistant professors submit proposals immediately. Most, but not all, Human Sciences professors also begin submitting grants almost immediately after they are hired. In Liberal Arts and Sciences, grant funding does seem to increase with experience for some hires, but perhaps because LAS includes both arts (which are less grant-reliant) and sciences, this trend is less pronounced than in other colleges and some professors (at all ranks) do not ever apply for grant funding. In the business college, it is incredibly rare for professors to apply for grants, and it is common that professors do not apply for grants in the design college.
As in the previous section, we will use quartiles to categorize startup funding by college so that we can examine total grants received as explained by years since hired.
It is important to note several caveats at this point: first, hires are not separated out by faculty rank or position, so hires whose primary responsibilities include administrative work may command large startup packages but bring in relatively little grant funding. Additionally, different colleges have different funding structures: LAS, for instance, may need to provide lab startup funding for science based departments, but would not have to provide this funding for new hires in English or History. Finally, the x-axis shows years since hire, which does not necessarily translate to years at ISU (faculty hired in 2005 may have left in 2011 after receiving tenure, for example). With these caveats in mind,
- Startup funding in LAS is highly correlated with later grant proposals; this is likely explained by departmental startup funding (and grant funding) norms. This correlation is much stronger than the correlation between startup funding and grant awards.
- Startup funding in Engineering is not very well correlated with proposed funding; this is largely because proposed funding is fairly consistent across engineering career trajectories. It may be the case that once a grant is successful, engineering professors do not devote much time to applying for additional funding.
- In Human Sciences, more than in any other college, startup funding seems to be primarily dependent on the year of hire. Grant proposals are fairly common across the range of startup packages.
- Grant proposals are relatively rare in the business college.
Individual Colleges: Proposals and Startup Funding by Department
Examining the LAS results in more detail, we see that departmental startup packages largely fall in the same quantiles. In Chemistry, Physics, BBMB, EEOB, Computer Science, Statistics, Psychology, and Math, the career trajectory of grant proposals suggests that the large startup packages are potentially worthwhile investments; these disciplines are also largely in the top two quartiles for startup funding. While many psychologists received large startup packages but have not received significant grant funding, it is apparent from this result that psychologists are applying for large amounts of funding, but are not necessarily successful. Disciplines with more economical startup packages are also less likely to have faculty applying for large grants; this is likely due to discipline norms, rather than faculty quality.
Publications and Startup Costs
We initially consider the effect that startup packages have on the number of publications (as measured by results aggregated in Google Scholar). Publications here include journal articles, books, conference proceedings (such as IEEE) and miscellaneous other research articles.
We see that in general, yearly publications are tenuously related to startup package cost. Upward trends in Engineering and Human Sciences (and the downward trend in Design) are attributable generally to one or two outliers. In LAS, there is some increase in average yearly publications initially (perhaps because of the association between Department, Startup Costs, and publication expectations), but this flattens out fairly quickly.
Analysis of Publications by College
In some LAS departments, like Computer Science, publication frequency does not appear to be overly impacted by career stage. In other departments, such as Chemistry, publications increase over time, and then may decrease after 5-6 years. Departments such as Music do not seem to have much publication pressure (at least not which would appear on Google Scholar). In the statistics department, most hires publish at least 2 papers per year throughout their careers, but after 3-5 years, some professors begin publishing at a much higher rate, perhaps due to increased collaboration (in fact, in the statistics department, papers with more than 6 authors are extremely uncommon until year 4-5 at ISU).
In all departments, however, it seems that differential startup funding does not impact publication frequency or trajectory.
In Ag & Life Sciences, publication trends seem to be highly department-dependent. In Animal Science (and, to a lesser degree, Agronomy), publications seem to primarily increase over time. In other departments, such as NREM and ABE, publications do not seem to increase over time, but are highly variable in any given year. In all departments, it does not appear that there is a significant relationship between startup funding and publishing trajectory.
In the business college, publications at (on average) 1.36 publications per year. As there are relatively few hires who have been at ISU for more than 5 years, it is difficult to draw any conclusions about publishing trajectories over time.
The College of Design seems to have relatively few publications per person, per year (as indexed by Google Scholar), in addition to relatively few hires between 2005-2015. This scarcity of data makes drawing any concludions difficult.
The College of Engineering seems to have a constant (or perhaps slowly increasing) publication rate for individuals (with considerable variability in any single year), across all departments. The Materials Science & Engineering department is notable as there seem to be two types of hires; those who publish in great volume, and those who do not publish more than 2-3 papers per year after 5 years at ISU.
There may be some small association between startup funding and publication trajectory within some departments, but it does not appear to be a simple relationship, and we do not have sufficient sample size within any single department to make strong conclusions.
In the College of Human Sciences, variability in yearly publications seems to outweigh any temporal or startup funding related trends in most departments.
In the College of Veterinary Medicine, publications seem to be confined to certain individuals, with most individuals publishing less than 5 papers per year that were indexed by Google Scholar. It may be (particularly in VDPAM) that individuals who are awarded larger startup packages are more likely to publish many papers each year.